Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's Take Control Tuesday.
So that means I have Manta Moussa on the phone. And Manta, last week we talked about getting your interest rate lowered if you carry a balance on your credit card. And a great strategy to do that. But you have to have a good payment history. What if you don't have the best payment history and you still want to try and get that interest rate lowered?
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Well, there is a strategy you can use. Now, let's understand whether you have a good payment history or a poor payment history industry, you're going to request that they lower your interest rate if you carry a balance.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: If you can get the interest rate lower, you're able to pay off the debt quicker.
And the quicker you get out of credit card debt, the better it is for you.
So let's talk about if you don't have a good payment history, what can you do to get your credit card interest lowered?
So the number on the back of your credit card. Customer service, you want to call them, first of all, if they bring it up, you want to acknowledge that your payment history isn't the best.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: You don't want to fight on that, but you want to tell them that you're going through a tough time and is there anything that they can do that can help you maintain your payments? Now, if you're late 30, 60, 90 days already, then once again, ask them for help. What programs do they have that can lower your payments, temporarily, offset a balance, lower your interest?
Once again, understand how credit cards work. They're making money off of money. It doesn't help them if you default and don't pay.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Or if you can't pay, they're charging you 20% now.
They would rather get 10% from you if you'll pay that did not get the 20%.
So negotiate.
And once they tell you what they can do, your next question should be, is that the best you can do?
[00:02:11] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: That's not quite what I was looking for.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: When you do that, do you have an idea in mind when you say, that's not quite what I was looking for?
[00:02:21] Speaker B: You can, but once again, you don't want to talk money because you don't know how low they'll go. Right. So is that the best you can do? If the answer is yes, that's the best I could do. If they lowered it from your original rate, say thank you and move on.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Right.
So you already got the cake. If you don't get the icing in the cherry, that's okay.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: You still got your meal but the point is is to get that interest rate lowered so that your monthly payment, the minimum and everything else will be lowered but more importantly so that you won't be adding interest to your balance every month. Credit card interest, the way it's calculated, it's almost punitive.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: If you're paying the minimum payment it can take you decades to pay off a balance of a few thousand dollars.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. I love that and as always it's good to, you know, open up your mouth and use the jawbone as we talked about in the past.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: If it worked for Samson, it can work for you.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Amen. Well listen, if you want to hear that strategy and the other ones as well, make sure you go to take control Tuesday.com and you can get that and all of our archives share that stuff because a lot of people need this information. Mansa, thank you.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Thank you.
